


Zen and the Art of Manscaping

by KuriKoer



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Beauty Tips, Flirting, For Science!, Gen, M/M, Magic, Shaving, Spa Day, hair removal discussion, spa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 09:03:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuriKoer/pseuds/KuriKoer
Summary: calime: And speaking of smooth I dunno why the fandom trope of loki having no body hair Because I am sure no beard can be explained as that loki does not want one and has magic to help in grooming. Doesn't mean no hair anywhere else though I bet he manscapes to some extent. Or lady loki-scapes. .... And now I imagine loki tony pepper spa day tip exchange





	Zen and the Art of Manscaping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calime/gifts).



"Speaking of smooth," Tony said apropos of nothing, and gestured up and down Loki's body.

Loki peeked from under the scented cloth over his face and raised an eyebrow.

"How?" Tony asked, not bothering to elaborate.

"Magic," Loki said shortly, and pulled the rag over his eyes again.

...The twitch at the edge of his lips suggested that he knew exactly what Tony's face looked like at that moment.

Pepper exhaled slowly and raised a hand swiftly, blocking Tony before he could appeal to her sense of outrage. She refused to have a sense of outrage on spa day.

*

They were having a spa day, Pepper and Tony and Loki, and technically Thor and Jane, but those two were given a private suite because that level of romantic adoration was a bit much even for Pepper, and she didn't want to test Tony, and certainly not Loki, on their patience and decorum. Therefore, she had not seen hair nor hide of the other two since Thor waltzed through the hallway, both his hair and his hide in glorious full view, while Jane ran desperately after him, wearing a soft fluffy bathrobe and clutching under her arm a much larger, if unused, bathrobe.

Pepper... was relaxing. Pepper was the one who suggested the spa as a calming bonding activity that Loki could participate in, now that he was, on and off, when the mood took him, working with the Avengers - never "for" the Avengers, of course. Something they could do that was considered pleasurable on Midgard. And now Pepper was lying down with hot flat stones all over her back, perfumed warm oil drizzling between them, and she was boneless and she was pleased.

Two tables over, she could hear Loki unabashedly moan.

And on the table next to hers, Tony fidgeted.

*

"What I don't understand is," Tony started, nudging Loki who was draped on the chair next to him like it's a throne, gazing curiously at the tiny fish slipping between his naked toes.

Loki looked up from the tub his feet were soaking in and gave Tony a sigh like the most patient first-grade teacher in the world.

"How do you groom _your_..." And the Asgardian waved his fingers towards Tony's chin.

"I shave," Tony said slowly, suspicious. "With the best trimmer in the world. And it's pretty close to perfect," he was warming up to the topic, "but it's nowhere near what you're having there..."

"I don't know what to tell you," Loki stated and leaned his head back, closing his eyes, surrendering his toes to the fish.

Tony took out his phone and placed it on the small table between them. "Jarvis," he said, "the schematics of my shaver?"

A diagram in blue light appeared, projected onto the ceiling. Loki examined it for a second. Early on, Tony had been excited, and then enraged, to find that both Thor and Loki could understand his raw data with no trouble at all. And that they both considered the concepts as well as the technology to be laughably though endearingly primitive.

"Those are _blades_ ," Loki said now, scathing. " _Thor_ shaves with blades." It was clear even to one who didn't know his personal history that he viewed the comparison as demeaning.

Tony held on to his own patience, mostly out of respect for Pepper, who tightened her hands on the armrests of her chair. She had yet to speak or even deign to look their way since they began this discussion.

"What do you use, then?" he asked again, his tone suggesting that he'd like to use blades on Loki and not in any shaving capacity.

Loki shrugged one shoulder and then raised his hand, fingers painting an intricate pattern in green flame-like lines floating in mid-air.

Tony studied the pattern. At first glance, it could have been one of the muted mandalas on the wallpaper across from them.

"This is physics," he finally said. Loki nodded. "I can tell it's physics," Tony said, with the same gratingly patient tone, "just barely. I can't tell what it _is_ , though."

"That is not my problem," Loki said amiably, and the display disappeared. A second later, so did the blue display from Tony's phone.

"Your logic is not like our Earth logic," Tony mumbled, defeated, and closed his eyes, immersing himself in the sensation of his toes being nibbled on by countless tiny snack-like-looking fish.

*

But Tony Stark is never more than temporarily defeated. They were lying in a darkened room, gentle steam wafting in the air and soothing, tinkling music spilling from hidden speakers, when Tony up and said, "Or you can wax."

Loki opened his eyes. Slowly he turned his head to where the figure of the towel-wrapped Tony was visible in the dim light. "Excuse me?"

Pepper sat up. "Out," she said, her voice cutting through the atmospheric gloom. "Both of you, out. Now."

*

So they were sitting on a bench in a sauna, towels draped over their laps, alone with the rolling clouds of heavy steam, talking it out. Tony's hair curled a little around the edges. Loki's hair was a spectacle of glistening, twisting black snakes - not literal snakes, although they seemed to be moving whenever he breathed in and out, not that Tony was checking out the narrow, near-hairless chest. The guy was twenty years younger than him. Or several hundred years older. It was even more confusing than with Steve.

And he wasn't helping. He was, as was Loki's wont, the opposite of helping.

"Wax I've found to be enjoyable," he was saying now, purring the words, running an idle finger up and down his chest to signify what Tony's mind readily supplied. "A candle dripped over flesh can indeed be," his voice dipped even further, "pleasant. After a fashion."

"You're kinky. I'm deeply unshocked," Tony mumbled, thankful for possibly the first time in his life that men his age no longer popped a boner at the slightest breeze. As it was, he was having a hard time - ha, ha - keeping his lap-towel from pitching a visible tent. He also suspected that Loki could probably hear or smell what was going on, anyway.

"But I'm not sure how that pertains to one's grooming regimen," Loki continued pleasantly.

Tony paused. Grasped the opportunity for the dignity-saving lifeline that it was. And began to explain the difference between waxplay, a fun sexytimes activity, and waxing, a painful, sticky, disgusting activity pursued for the sole purpose of measuring up to certain beauty standards. The explanation, and the phantom memories attached to it, definitely took care of his budding erection.

It also had the added benefit of distracting Loki from being a smug, infuriating bastard. The Asgardian was appalled.

"You would smear this, this tar-like substance on your skins..."

"It's not tar," Tony interrupted, "in fact I'm pretty sure you can make it from sugar and lemon and honey."

Loki narrowed his eyes. "You would smear cake batter on your bodies until it hardened, then pull it off along with hair and skin..."

"We don't pull off the skin. It's just old epidermis, we don't need it," Tony tried to interject.

"Like snakes," Loki muttered.

"Like exfoliating," Tony retorted, "don't tell me you don't exfoliate, I saw your pores. I mean I haven't seen your pores, that's the point."

"There must be a better way, even here on Midgard!" Loki exclaimed, pronouncing 'Midgard' in the same way another might state, 'There must be a better way, even in this literal garbage can which is on fire'.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out!" Tony shouted back.

*

Five days later and Tony still had no idea. He had ten new inventions, each probably usable for _something_ , but not one was what he'd wanted. And he was starting to see green sparks in front of his eyes.

"Oh," he said when Loki materialized across his workbench, "it's you."

"It's me," Loki agreed pleasantly, walking around the table to glance at what Tony was doing from a closer angle. He still smelled faintly of all those scented oils, honey and lavender and cedar. Tony smelled mostly of motor oil, and days old sweat, and sour coffee.

"Come on, gimme a hint, bunny ears," Tony said, and if his nickname game was off, he was going to blame it on sleep deprivation. "Is it sonic based? Laser? We do hair removal with laser, but that's from the root. I know you're not doing anything permanent to that pretty face of yours. Are you? Can you even do something permanent?" He uncrossed his eyes. "I remember there was something about Superman shaving and cutting his hair with heat vision because scissors broke on his locks of steel. Is it something like that?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Loki informed him, taking his coffee cup, sniffing it, and putting it back down with distaste. With a humourless chuckle he added, "My magic does not use heat, as a general rule."

"I'm going to invent something," Tony said fiercely, "and it's gonna be the best thing ever. And I'll make you do your manscaping with it, and then you'll admit, out loud, that I invented the best thing. Fuck your magic."

He may have been a little high on sleeplessness and fumes. He may have been over-caffeinated. He may have let his competitive streak get the better of him - Pepper had warned him about that before.

"Let me sum it up," Loki said, suddenly standing far too close. "You think my face is pretty."

Tony couldn't exactly deny - he couldn't exactly speak, for some reason, but he made an expression that he hoped conveyed 'meh, I've seen better'.

"You would like me to use your invention on my privates," Loki was purring, and Tony wasn't sure why he thought the Asgardian wouldn't recognize the term. This was the man whose 'civilian' outfits were on a par with Tony's own gala suits. This was the man standing right next to Tony, looming over him in a way that somehow wasn't at all threatening, considering their history. "And you are interested in," Loki licked his lips, pretended to recall the phrasing, and then leaned and whispered hotly in Tony's ear, " _fucking_ my magic?"

Tony gazed helplessly. He wasn't sure how this was happening now. It hadn't happened when they were sitting together, both almost entirely naked and sweaty, in a small private room, after hours of massages and relaxation techniques that left his muscles in their prime. It was happening now, when he couldn't remember when he'd last brushed his teeth, and his back was screaming at him about ergonomic chairs. Now, when his own beard had been left unattended for days. It was happening _now_?!

Apparently it was happening now, he realized with a kind of dawning acceptance when Loki's clothes began to shimmer and disappear one by one, and those clever, magical hands insinuated themselves under his t-shirt and settled over his chest.

*

Two months later, after vigorous testing and some hastened mass production, Pepper was saying very smugly to a gaggle of reporters at the press conference, "Once more, Stark Tech revolutionizes yet another industry," as she pulled the curtain off the huge poster of the latest in hair removal technology.

*

"So," Tony said, curling around the long lean body sprawled in his bed, studying with interest the rate of disappearance of various bruises on Loki's marble skin, "candle wax? Tell me more."

*

[end]


End file.
